Tag Archives: Diana Scarwid

One of the best parts of Bunco–and there’s actually a lot of good stuff in it–is how director Signer composes his shots of “leads” Robert Urich and Tom Selleck. Even though Urich’s top-billed and has a little more to do, Singer makes sure to get both men in each shot. So there’s some occasionally awesome shots just from that star making technique.

Urich and Selleck got the quotation marks because they really aren’t the leads in their own pilot. Donna Mills runs the majority of the episode. She’s the undercover cop, in danger from the con man the boys can’t catch. Alan Feinstein plays the con man. He’s fantastic, far more dynamic than Urich or Selleck.

The leads have some amusing conversations, but they’re barely in it except to run around.

Oh, and Michael Sacks is bad as the big villain. But it’s otherwise, very entertaining stuff.

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CREDITS

Directed by Alexander Singer; written and produced by Jerrold L. Ludwig; director of photography, Gene Polito; edited by Marjorie Fowler and Bill Mosher; music by John Carl Parker.

I’m a little upset. Anthony Perkins only directed two pictures and one of them–this one–was written by Charles Edward Pogue. Pogue’s a bit of punchline, but at least most of Psycho III is well-plotted. His dialogue, especially at the beginning, is iffy, but it might also have been Perkins getting used to directing actors.

Psycho III takes place a month after Psycho II. While II was a really sensitive attempt to follow up on a famous cinema character, it ended weakly. III attempts, eventually, to right the misstep. I can’t figure out why Maltin, for instance, says this one’s played for laughs. It’s even sadder in some ways than the second film, with Perkins’s Norman finding the hint of real redemption and real human concern, only to have it destroyed.

Perkins, I think, did stage work and he directs the good actors in Psycho III like stage actors. The scenes with him and Diana Scarwid, for example, are just lovely, the two of them really understanding how to share the space and the time. Scenes with Jeff Fahey, not so much. Fahey’s awful in Psycho III and it’s sort of shocking no one realized the attempted rapist–Fahey’s establishing characteristic–was a villain deserving of a spectacular end.

Directed by Anthony Perkins; screenplay by Charles Edward Pogue, based on characters created by Robert Bloch; director of photography, Bruce Surtees; edited by David E. Blewitt; music by Carter Burwell; production designer, Henry Bumstead; produced by Hilton A. Green; released by Universal Pictures.

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La Haine (1995, Mathieu Kassovitz)-Mostly outstanding night in the life picture about three young men, one White (Vincent Cassel), one Black (Hubert Koundé), and one Arab (Saïd Taghmaoui); the city is rioting after police assault one of their peers. Writer-director Kassovitz never gets preachy, impressive given it's shot in atmospheric black and white, but he does get predictable, constraining the narrative a tad much. Excellent work from Koundé, with Cassel a strong second.
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